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I 



GEOGRAPHICAL, STATISTICAL AND 
ETHICAL VIEW 



AMERICAN SLAVEHOLDERS' 



REBELLION 



SIDNEY E. MORSE, A. M 



ILLUSTRATED WITH A CEROGRAPHIC MAP. 

NEW YORK: 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH, 

No. 688 BROADWAY. 

1868. 



GEOGRAPHICAL, STATISTICAL AND 
ETHICAL VIEW 



AMERICAN SLAVEHOLDERS' 



REBELLION 



BY 



SIDNEY E. MORSE, A. M 



ILLUSTRATED WITH A CEROGRAPHIC MAP. 



* 



5 

NEW YORK: 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH, 

No. 683 BROADWAY. 
1863. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by 

ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of 

New York* 



printer an* Strno taper, 



A GEOGRAPHICAL, STATISTICAL AND ETHICAL VIEW 



AMERICAN SLAVEHOLDERS' REBELLION. 



The great error of the United States government, in 
its attempt to put down the Slaveholders' Rebellion, 
obviously has been bad general strategy, arising from 
a failure to take a simple, comprehensive view of the 
country and people to be subdued. 

Who are the rebels, and where do they live ? We 
all know that the great slaveholders in the states east 
of the Mississippi River, are the life and soul of the 
rebellion. Now these great slaveholders are not, as is 
commonly imagined, spread almost equally over the 
whole territory of the States in which they reside, but 
are confined to a narrow strip of country, extending, in 
the shape of a horseshoe, along the coast of the At- 
lantic on the east, the Gulf of Mexico on the south, and 
the eastern banks of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, on 
the west. This horseshoe-shaped country is scarcely 
anywhere more than 200 miles wide, while the line of 
its outer border, which also passes through or near al- 
most every one of its principal cities, viz. : Alexandria, 
Richmond, and Norfolk, in Virginia; Newbern and 
Wilmington, in North Carolina ; Charleston, in South 
Carolina ; Savannah, in Georgia ; Pensacola, in Florida ; 
Mobile, in Alabama; New Orleans, in Louisiana; 
Natchez and Vicksburg, in Mississippi ; Memphis and 
Nashville, in Tennessee ; and Columbus and Louisville, 
in Kentucky, is nearly 2,000 miles long. 

This horseshoe-shaped country consists, to a great ex- 



4 VIEW OF THE AMERICAN 

tent, of low, fertile land, fitted for the production of 
tobacco, rice, cotton, sugar, &c, but within it, and al- 
most encircled by it, is a mountainous tongue of land, 
stretching from the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, 
in a southwesterly direction, nearly to the centre of Ala- 
bama, — a country 500 miles long, and, on an average, 
almost 200 miles broad, embracing the western third 
of Virginia, the western fifth of North Carolina, 
Pickens district in South Carolina, the northern sixth 
of Georgia, the northeastern sixth of Alabama, and 
the eastern thirds of Tennessee and Kentucky. 

This Mountain district covers an area of about 
80,000 square miles, and, in 1860, according to the 
official census, contained nearly 1,500,000 inhabitants, 
of whom only 126,000, or one in twelve, were slaves ; 
while in the horseshoe-shaped country around it, occu- 
pied by the slaveholders, there were, according to the 
same census, in round numbers, 7,000,000 inhabitants, 
of whom 3,100,000 were negroes, and of the 3,900,000 
whites more than 700,000 were in Kentucky, leaving 
less than 3,200,000 whites outside of the Mountain 
district, in the eight rebel states east of the Mississippi 
liver. 

The people of this Mountain district, when left en- 
tirely free to express their sentiments, have always 
been strongly but rationally anti-slavery. A little 
more than thirty years ago there were anti-slavery 
societies all over Western Virginia, Western North 
Carolina, East Tennessee, and Eastern Kentucky ; and 
the people in these parts of those Slave States, then al- 
most unanimously demanded the emancipation of the 
slaves, by the acts of their respective state legislatures, 
the emancipation to be accompanied by the removal of 
the freed negroes to other lands. It was just after the 



subject of emancipation had been fully discussed by the 
Virginia legislature, with a fair prospect of the even- 
tual success of the emancipationists, that the ultra- 
abolition movement commenced in New England, and 
gave the great slaveholders in the low country power 
to effect that suppression of all public agitation of the 
Emancipation question throughout the whole South, 
which has continued to this day. 

The mountaineers of the South regard the climate 
and productions of their district as unsuitecl to negro 
labor, and hence their anti-slavery feeling. They are not 
Abolitionists. They do not regard slaveholding, or the 
institution of slavery, as a sin. They take the Bible 
as their standard of right in ethics as well as in reli- 
gion ; and their most distinguished religious teachers, 
Brownlow, Ross, and others, have taught them from 
that book, that God himself instituted a system of per- 
petual, hereditary slavery, as a part of the government 
of his chosen people (Leviticus, xxv. 44, 45, 46) ; and 
that not only Abraham and other Jewish patriarchs, but 
some of the men most distinguished for Christian vir- 
tues in the time of Christ and his Apostles, were slave- 
holders, none of whom were rebuked for holding their 
fellowmen in slavery, while on one of these slave- 
holders, who was also an officer in the army of an ab- 
solute military despot, Christ bestowed the highest 
eulogy, and that too immediately after this slaveholder 
had openly avowed that he held and exercised absolute 
power over his fellow-men in both of these relations 
(Luke, vii. 1-10). 

These mountaineers maintain that the Bible doc- 
trine respecting Slavery and Government is, that all 
the power which one man possesses over another 
under human law, however great the power, and how- 



VIEW OF THE AMEKICAN 



ever acquired, is "of God " (Komans, xiii. 1) ; that lie who 
uses his power in love fulfills the law of God (Eomans, 
xiii. 8-10), but that every violation of the law of love, 
either in acquiring, using, relinquishing, or refusing to 
relinquish power, is a sin. They do not predicate sin 
of the possession of power, or of the amount of power, 
but of the abuse of power. 

They assert that Christ's law is Love ; that Love re- 
quires good, the highest good ; and that the highest 
good often forbids the abolition of great evils, even 
when those evils originated in great crimes. After the 
devil, for example, had sowed tares in a farmer's field 
of wheat, and the tares had sprung up with the wheat, 
Christ advised the farmer's servants to let the tares 
11 grow" until the harvest (Matt. xiii. 30). If these 
servants had consulted the devil, the devil doubtless 
would have denounced Christ's counsel as the fruit of 
the doctrine of expediency, and would have ordered 
the servants instantly to root out all the tares from the 
field, on the principle, that the sowing of the tares was 
a wrong, that the growth of the «tares is a continuance 
of the wrong, that the long continuance of wrong can- 
not justify its further continuance, and that it is always 
right and safe to abolish instantly all wrongs, leaving 
to God the consequences. Our brethren in the moun- 
tains of the South profess to have learned their ethics 
in Chrises school. 

Armed thus, as they believe, with the Word of God, 
these plain and unlettered, but morally courageous 
mountaineers, regardless of public sentiment in the 
most enlightened countries of this enlightened age, 
throw down the gauntlet, and not only challenge the 
learned theologians and philosophers of England, New 
England, and all the world, to prove that slavery is a 



slaveholders' REBELLION. 7 

sin ; but, on the other hand, boldly declare their own 
readiness to maintain that slavery, when established by 
law in any country, is part and parcel of the govern- 
ment of the country, and that government is a divine 
institution, deriving its authority, not from " the consent 
of the governed," but from the appointment of God 
(Romans xiii. 1). They hold, therefore, that to deny, 
in Virginia or Carolina, the right of the slaveholder 
to the power which the law of the state gives him to 
rule his negro slaves, is as truly a sin against the law 
of God, and as worthy of punishment by the law of 
man, as the denial in France of the right of Louis 
Napoleon to the power which the law there gives him 
over his subjects. 

While, however, these Bible-reverencing backwoods- 
men maintain so strenuously, and so conscientiously, 
the Christian lawfulness of negro slavery ; while they 
would denounce as a crime, the sudden abolition of 
slavery in a country where the slaves are numerous, and 
situated as they are in the cotton, rice, and sugar 
districts of the South; while, indeed, they would 
cheerfully expose their own lives in defending the 
slaveholders of those districts from any who should 
attempt to excite their slaves to insurrection, they 
regard slavery in their own mountain district as a great 
evil, and would heartily rejoice to witness its total 
abolition there, if they could only be assured that the 
emancipated negroes would migrate to other lands, and 
be as happy and as well cared for, temporally and 
spiritually, in freedom as they now are in slavery. 

The mountaineers of our Slave States are not sur- 
passed by the people of any state or district in the 
land in ardent love of true republican liberty, in uni- 
form and unwavering loyalty to the general govern- 



8 VIEW OF THE AMERICAN" 

ment, and in enthusiastic attachment to the American 
Union. They abhor Secessionism as much as they 
abhor Abolitionism. They regard Abolitionism as the 
mother of Secessionism, and both as the offspring of the 
Evil One, begot and commissioned by him to destroy 
all the good which our good Father in Heaven has 
bestowed upon His most favored country and most 
favored people on the earth. These free and unam- 
bitious mountaineers have no interest to be promoted, 
and no feeling to be gratified by joining the Southern 
Confederacy. They know that in such a confederacy 
all other classes of the population will of course be 
ruled by the great slaveholders, who will compel the 
negro to work for them as a menial in the house and 
on the plantation, and the non-slaveholding white, in 
the mountains as well as in the plains, to fight their 
battles, and carry out their schemes of conquest and 
aggrandizement. They loathe the thought of such 
humiliation. They glory in the great Republic, and 
in their present relation of equality with all its citizens 
in every part of its wide domain. 

In the map of the Slave States east of the Mississsippi 
river, which we give above, we have shaded the Moun- 
tain district by ruled lines, so that its shape, and the 
shape and relative position of the rebel portion of the 
country may be seen at a glance of the eye. We have also 
inserted on the map a complete view of the railroads 
throughout the entire section. All the railroad lines 
here laid down are finished roads, except the line from 
Danville, in Kentucky, through "Williamsburg to Knox- 
ville, in Tennessee, which was proposed, we believe, by 
President Lincoln as a military road, nearly two years 
since, but was not adopted by Congress, for what rea- 
sons we do not know. 



slaveholders' rebellion. 9 

It will be seen that, with the exception of the short 
roads between Parkersburg, Grafton, and Wheeling, in 
the extreme north, and those from Cleveland, through 
Kingston and Stevenson, in the extreme south, there 
is, in the whole Mountain district, but one railroad, 
viz., that part of the great railroad line from Norfolk 
to Memphis, which enters this Mountain district be- 
tween Lynchburg and Dublin, in Virginia, and leaves 
it beyond Stevenson in Alabama. The border of the 
Mountain district is, however, everywhere connected 
with the outer border of the horseshoe-shaped country, 
by railroads commencing at, or proceeding from, points 
near the foot of the mountains, and crossing the plan- 
tations of the low country to cities near tide-water in 
the east and south, and on the bank of the Mississippi 
or of the Ohio River in the west. We give here a list 
of these cross-railroads, in geographical order, with the 
distances, as laid down in Appleton's Railway Guide, 
from the stations at the foot of the mountains to the 
cities on the coast, and on the Mississippi and Ohio 
rivers. 

Miles. 

1. Mt. Jackson, Va., to Alexandria, . .112 

2. Jackson, R., to Richmond, ... 195 

3. Lynchburg, Va., to Richmond & Petersburg, 123 

4. Lynchburg, Va., to Norfolk, . . .203 

5. Salisbury, N. C, to Newbern, . . . 239 

6. Salisbury, Tsf. C, to Wilmington, . . .265 

7. Yorkville, S. C, to Charleston, . . 217 

8. Spartanburg, S. C, to do . . . . 226 

9. Greenville, S. C, to do . . . 273 

10. Anderson, S. C, to do . . . .257 

11. Athens, Geo., to do . 253 

12. Atlanta, Geo., to do ... 308 



10 



VIEW OF THE AMERICAN 





Miles 




293 


. 


. 323 




344 


. 


. 488 




349 


. 


. 188 




271 


. 


. 113 




298 




• 



13. Atlanta, Ceo., to Savannah, 

14. Atlanta, Geo. ; to Pensacola, 

15. Talladega, Ala., to Mobile, 

16. Talladega, Ala., to New Orleans, . 
IT. Talladega, Ala., to Vicksburg, . 

18. Decatur, Ala., to Memphis, - 

19. Decatur, Ala., to Columbus, Ky., 
10. Stevenson, Ala., to Nashville, Tenn, 
21. Stevenson, Ala., to Louisville, Ky., 



By comparing this table with our map, it will be 
seen, that, while the great cities of the rebels are 
widely separated from each other on the outer frontier 
of their territory, on a line extending, even when 
drawn in the air directly from one to the other, 
through a distance of nearly 2,000 miles, every one of 
these cities, except New Orleans, is within 12 or 14 
hours, by railroad, of some railroad station near the 
border of the Mountain district; and even New Orleans 
can be reached by railroad, from Talladega in less than 
20 hours, the train moving at the rate of only 25 miles 
an hour ! 

In view of these geographical and statistical facts, 
is it not clear that the true method of putting down 
the rebellion effectually, is, to take military possesion 
of the whole Mountain district represented on our map, 
and to keep it forever from the control of the slave- 
holders % We already hold the whole of Eastern 
Kentucky and more than two-thirds of Western Vir- 
ginia, The people of East Tennessee have been crying 
to us for nearly two years for arms and men, to enable 
them to throw off the yoke of the slaveholders, and 
late Southern papers inform us that the Confederate 
government has been compelled to send troops into 



slaveholders' rebellion. 11 

the mountains of Northern Alabama, Northern Georgia, 
and Western North Carolina, to put down the Union- 
ists who are there earnestly rebelling against the 
rebellion. 

Why then should we not send at once from Eastern 
Kentucky and Northwestern Virginia into Southwest- 
ern Virginia and East Tennessee, a military force suffi- 
ciently strong to take permanent possession of the 
railroad from Dublin to Knoxville, a distance of 230 
miles ? We have already twice temporarily broken 
up this railroad by destroying the bridges ; once in 
November, 1861, when the Unionists in East Tennessee 
conspired for that purpose, and once, recently, when 
General Carter, with small bands of cavalry, passed 
secretly from Kentucky through gaps in the Cumber- 
land Mountains into Virginia, and came down upon the 
road near the point where it crosses the line from 
Virginia into East Tennessee. Let expeditions now 
be prepared on a large scale, and let the attack be 
made simultaneously on points distant from each 
other. 

The Cumberland River is at present under our con- 
trol from its mouth to its source. It is navigable to 
Mill Spring, and at that point, and at numerous points 
below, all less than 100 miles from Knoxville, there 
are common roads leading directly to the great railroad 
in the vicinity of Knoxville. Big Sandy River, which 
forms part of the boundary between Virginia and 
Kentucky, is said to be navigable for steamers from its 
mouth in the Ohio to a point on the West or Louisa 
Fork, not far from Pikeville. From Pikeville a road 
runs up the valley and along the banks of the Louisa 
Fork to its source, and thence about 25 miles to Salt- 
ville, which will be found on our map, at the end of 



12 VIEW OF THE AMERICAN 

a spur of the great Virginia and Tennessee railroad, 
and nine miles from the junction. 

From Pikeville to Saltville an air line is only 60 
miles, and the traveled road is very direct through 
nearly the whole distance. From Pikeville also a road 
runs along the west side of the Cumberland Mountains 
to Cumberland Gap, with branches leading through 
six other gaps, into the State of Virginia, and by 
winding courses in that State to different points on the 
great railroad. 

Starting, then, from points near the head of naviga- 
tion on the Cumberland and Big Sandy Rivers, why 
may not bodies of men, properly armed, be sent 
through some of the roads which we have designated, 
to break the great railroad simultaneously near Knox- 
ville and near Dublin, and then to occupy and fortify 
the intermediate portion? This would rescue from 
the dominion of the rebels the southwestern part of 
Virginia and the northern part of East Tennessee, a 
countrv containing about 400,000 inhabitants ; and it 
would break permanently the great iron band which now 
holds together the extreme parts of their horseshoe- 
shaped country. 

Having accomplished so much, the next step might 
be to build, with all possible expedition, a military 
railroad, first from Saltville to Pikeville, a distance of 
about 60 miles, and then from Pikeville 60 or 70 
miles further, to Ashland on the Ohio River, near the 
mouth of the Big Sandy, and not far from Ironton 
in the State of Ohio, the terminus of a branch of the 
Cincinnati and Marietta Railroad. When completed 
to Pikeville, or to the head of steam navigation 
on the Big Sandy, and especially when extended to 
the Ohio River, an army of 200,000 men, which might 



slaveholders' rebellion. 13 

be quickly collected at Ashland from the Northern 
and Northwestern States, could thence be transported 
on this new railroad, with all the cannon, food, and 
munitions of war of every kind requisite for such, a 
force, in a few hours, through an entirely friendly 
country, far from all possible interruption by the 
rebels, to Knoxville, in the centre of the Mountain 
district — the centre of an inner circle occupied by 
1,500,000 staunch Southern Unionists, and the centre 
also of the outer horseshoe-shaped country occupied 
by the rebel slaveholders. Once at Knoxville, an 
army of 200,000 men would soon be in possession of 
the whole of the great railroad of the Mountain dis- 
trict with its four inlets from the low country; and 
could then finish at its leisure two branches which 
were proposed some time since, each less than 100 
miles long, viz., one, from a point on the great railroad, 
about 50 miles east of Knoxville to Morganton in 
North Carolina, and the other from Rome in Georgia 
to Talladega in Alabama. The six railroad inlets 
from the low country might then be protected, if 
deemed expedient, by fortifications at any suitable 
places : 1, between Dublin and Lynchburgh ; 2, be- 
tween Morganton and Salisbury; 3, between Kingston 
and Atlanta; 4, between Rome and Talladega; 5, be- 
tween Stevenson and Decatur; and 6, between Stevenr 
son and Tullahoma. 

What then would be our position, and what the 
position of the rebel slaveholders \ Is it not obvious 
that 200,000 men- in full military possession of the 
Mountain district would be more than equal, both in 
defensive and offensive war, to 400,000 occupying the 
horseshoe-shaped country below? The central posi- 
tion, the compact form, the jaggedness of the surface, 



14 VIEW OF THE AMERICAN 

the barrenness of the soil, and the position of the rail- 
roads in the Mountain district, are invaluable military- 
advantages. 

In defensive war, the inaccessibility and the state of 
dispersion of the mountaineers, would be formidable ob- 
stacles to invasion. Except on the railroad lines there 
is not a single considerable town in the whole Mountain 
district, and villages of even a few hundred inhabitants 
are of rare occurrence. The mountaineers are almost 
wholly small farmers and graziers, living in cottages, 
scattered over valleys and in nooks of the mountains. 
Their wealth consists, chiefly, of grazing lands and 
forests, with hogs and cattle running wild in the woods. 
Such property presents no temptation even to guerrilla 
bands of invaders, and the Confederates would be slow 
to resort to this mode of warfare against men scattered 
over a wooded and mountainous country, familiar with 
its by-roads, and who could retaliate with tenfold effect 
by raids into the low country. The control of its rail- 
roads is all that would induce the Confederates to 
attack the Mountain district ; and a glance at our map 
will show how easily these roads could be defended by 
200,000 men against the invasion of all that would 
remain of a Confederate army of 400,000, after de- 
ducting from it the detachments necessary to garrison 
scores of forts, and defend a score of cities, on their sea- 
coast and river frontier of 2,000 miles, to watch 
3,000,000 slaves ; and to guard the villages and planta- 
tions along an inland frontier of more than 1,200 miles, 
the line of this inland frontier running for the whole 
distance at the base of a cluster of mountains, and 
everywhere crossing, at short intervals, the mouths of 
valleys opening from barren mountains into fertile 
plains ! It could not be difficult, surely, with 200,000, 



15 

or the half of 200,000 men, to defend four or six rail- 
road inlets to the Mountain district against all the force 
that the Confederates could spare from 400,000 men 
for attack, after making even the scantiest provision 
for the defense of their outer and inner frontier of 
more than 3,000 miles ! 

But how would it be with the mountaineers as inva- 
ders, and the Confederates acting on the defensive ? 
Could 400,000 men defend the horseshoe-shaped 
country against a general in the Mountain district at 
the head of 200,000 men, whom he could divide into 
bands to suit his purpose, and send down to the low 
country, on the east, or the west, or the south side of 
the mountains, without an hour's warning, through any 
one or more of scores of natural and artificial outlets 
along a frontier of 1,200 miles \ 

At the present time, indeed, the Confederates, con- 
trolling as they do the great railroad and all south of 
it in the Mountain district, with 400,000 men maintain 
the struggle against our 800,000, and this, too, while 
our navy blockades every port on their coast ; because 
our Greneral-in-chief, with his immense force divided 
into ten or twelve great fragments, is attempting with 
eight of these fragments to enter the low country of 
the Confederacy by assaulting at once as many fortified 
lines and places on its outer frontier, viz.: the line of the 
Rappahannock in Virginia, the cities of Wilmington, 
Charleston and Savannah on the Atlantic coast, Mobile 
on the Gulf of Mexico, Port Hudson and Vicksburg on 
the Mississippi river, and the line of Duck river in 
Middle Tennessee. With 400,000 men the Confederates 
can strongly fortify all these lines and places, rendering 
them almost impregnable, and still have a reserve force 
so large that, from their central position, and with their 



16 VIEW OF THE AMEEICAN 

railroad connections, they may overwhelm us at any 
of these places, at the moment of attack, with superior 
numbers. But let us once have full military possession 
of the Mountain district with only 200,000 men, and 
the whole case would be reversed and more than 
reversed; for, with 200,000 men we could not only 
fortify and render impregnable against the rebels the 
four, or six, as the case may be, great railroad inlets to 
the Mountain district from the low country, but, with 
more than 100,000 men to spare, we could cut their 
horseshoe-shaped country into parts, and overrun suc- 
cessively every part. The most skillful strategist that 
ever lived could not place 400,000 men so as to protect 
the country of the rebel slaveholders from being over- 
run and plundered at pleasure by 200,000 men, after 
they had obtained full military possession of the 
Mountain district. 

Let then every threatened disaster befall our arms ; 
let foreign Powers raise the blockade of all the South- 
ern ports ; let New Orleans, Port Royal and Newbern 
be recaptured; let the- army of the Potomac be com- 
pelled to abandon the line of the Rappahannock, and 
again act on the defensive before Washington and 
Harper's Ferry; let the rebels drive back Rosecrans 
till they occupy again what they lost a year ago — the 
line of Mill Spring, Bowling Green, Fort Donelson, 
Fort Henry and Columbus ; or, worse still, let all our 
forces in the West be compelled to act on the defen- 
sive before Cincinnati ; let the nine months' men and 
the two years' men in our army refuse to reenlist at 
the expiration of their present terms of service ; let all 
these disasters and more come upon us, and still, with 
200,000 men in full military possession of the Moun- 
tain district of the South, we should come triumph- 



SLAVEHOLDERS' • REBELLION. 1 7 

antly out of the contest, and dictate at Knoxville the 
terms of peace ; for we should have within our grasp 
all the slaves, all the railroads, all the property, of 
every description, of eight rebel states. "Without a 
gunboat on the Mississippi, the Northwest would 
secure the free navigation of that river from its mouth 
to its source ; and without firing a cannon at sea the 
Northeast would deliver its shipowners from their 
worst enemy on the ocean. The ban'e and the antidote 
in this great rebellion are both in the Slave States of 
the South. 

We have said that the most skillful strategist that 
ever lived could not place 400,000 men so as to protect 
the horseshoe-shaped country of the rebels from being 
overrun and plundered by an army of 200,000, after it 
should have obtained full military possession of the 
Mountain district. But how can the Confederates 
raise and maintain an army of 400,000 men, after this 
Mountain district shall have been rescued from their 
grasp ? Now, by cruel conscriptions of these mountain- 
eers, and by temporarily abandoning the country west 
of the Mississippi, retaining on this side of the river 
nearly all the Texans, Louisianians and men of Arkan- 
sas in their army, they may be able to count 400,000. 
But how will it be when the mountaineers, by our aid, 
shall have secured their independence, and the horse- 
shoe-shaped country is left to recruit its army exclu- 
sively from its own population ? The whole white 
population of the nine slave states east of the Missis- 
sippi and south of the Ohio, and Potomac, in 1860, was 
only 5,267,549 ; and of this number there were in 
Kentucky, which remains loyal, and in the Mountain 
district, which will manifest its loyalty whenever it is 
free to speak, 2,093,934, leaving in the eight rebel 



18 VIEW OF THE AMERICAN 

States east of the Mississippi river only 3,173,615 
whites, who are both in sympathy with the rebels, and 
under their military control. How is it possible for 
3,173,615 men, women and children to supply at first, 
and to keep up afterwards, from its own number, an 
army of 400,000 men? It would take in the first 
instance more than twelve and a half per cent, — more 
than one in eight of the entire white population, i. e., 
more than one in four of all the white males or nearly 
two-thirds of all the white males between the as:es of 
18 and 45 ! The Kentuckians and mountaineers could 
raise 200,000 men from their 2,093,934 whites by a 
draft of less than ten per cent, of their entire white 
population, or less than one-half of the white males 
between the ages of 18 and 45. 

If it is true that 200,000 men in military possession 
of the Mountain district of the South, can from its cen- 
tral position, from the nature of the country, and from 
its railroad connections, not only defend it against 
double their number in the low country, but can ac- 
tually overrun the low country at pleasure, holding all 
its people and property within their grasp, we have 
then this surprising result, that at the commencement 
of this great rebellion, our government could have put 
it down effectually, merely by furnishing Unionists in 
that large continuous district of the Slave States, in 
which the Union sentiment is overwhelmingly predomi- 
nant, with arms, food, and clothing, and forming them 
into bands to defend themselves against the conscrip- 
tion, and the horrible atrocities to which they have 
been subjected by the rebel Slaveholders. There were 
Unionists enough in one continuous district of the South 
itself, to have put down the rebellion without calling 
upon the Free States for a single soldier. All that the 



19 

North had to do was to supply with arms, food, and 
clothing, the soldiers which Kentucky and the Moun- 
tain district might have furnished from their own popu- 
lation. We did not need to invade Virginia or the 
Carolinas, to capture New Orleans, Memphis, or Nash- 
ville, to blockade the Southern ports, or to interrupt in 
any way their commerce with the rest of the world. 
"We did not need to attempt with our gunboats to open 
the navigation of the Mississippi. We might have 
spared all the lives lost in our great battles, and might 
have saved all the treasure we have expended in sup- 
port of our fleets and armies. We did not need to 
threaten the ruin of the South by the emancipation of 
her negro slaves. All that we had to do was to eman- 
cipate our own white brethren, nay, to fulfill our con- 
stitutional obligations, our solemn oaths to these white 
brethren, our fellow citizens as well as fellow Chris- 
tians, the loj^al, Union-loving, liberty-loving, liberty- 
deserving mountaineers of the South ; to deliver these 
brethren of our own race and color, from a despotism be- 
yond all comparison worse than that of negro slavery, — 
a despotism under which they are hnnted through their 
mountains and forests, by Indian savages, with scalping- 
knives and blood-hounds, forced into the Eebel army, 
pushed forward there at the point of the bayonet, into 
the front ranks, to war against the government of their 
choice, against the flag under which their fathers and our 
fathers fought together the battles of Independence, 
the flag in which they have always gloried, and still 
glory, as the banner of constitutional Liberty and Union 
in America, and the banner of Hope to the oppressed 
throughout the world. To put down the Slaveholders' 
Eebellion, this is all that we had to do at the com- 
mencement of the rebellion, and it is all that we have 
to do now. 



GEOGRAPHICAL, STATISTICAL AND 
ETHICAL VIEW 



AMERICAN SLAVEHOLDERS' 



REBELLION 



SIDNEY E. MORSE, A. M 



ILLUSTRATED WITH A CEROGRAPHIC MAP, 



' 0„ 

b ■ 



NEW YORK: 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH, 

No. 683 BROADWAY. • 
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